Monday, August 19, 2013

Ready for moving

Looking at my last entry, I realise that things have moved on somewhat. The cones on the Columbus have appeared in droves:

These are nice plump cones that have a faint smell of what hops should smell like. I have also noticed that some of the cones have what look like smaller cones growing just above them in fronds:

Not sure what these are yet. With any luck they'll be extra cones. May just have to wait and see what happens to them.

The Cascade has also produced a good number of cones, although not nearly as much as the Columbus:

Hopefully, I'll get a decent amount out of this. The Willamette, unfortunately, has only produced a handful:

There are only one or two others that you can't see in this picture. Hopefully, there has been a lot of effort put into developing its root system. With any luck next year will give me a great harvest.

Something else that has been progressing is our house moving. To that end I have built another raised bed ready for the move of the hops:

I used the same procedure as last time with the slight exception that I have used a year's worth of compost that we generated in our previous place mixed with a couple of bags of top soil that I found under the screen porch in our new place. The idea is that they will grow up to the window above:

This will hopefully provide some shade immediately below. To help with stringing them up I've stretched some twine across the windowsill:

Somewhat difficult to see but I have inserted a couple of short lengths of bamboo into the holes in the brick. I drilled a couple of small holes into the pieces of bamboo and threaded some twine through. The plan is that pulling down on the twine in between will only serve to wedge the bamboo into the bricks more. We shall see soon enough when I transplant the plants to this bed.